Scenes
by Michelle H. C. Zhu
Summary: [Sequel to "From The Inside"] Following Raiden and Sam's epic rooftop encounter is philosophical bull of the garden-variety kind, the events that took place after Sam's death, Sam's true intentions, Sam's legacy, and Bladewolf.


**_A/N:_**_ Right so this is the "official" sequel to From the Inside. The stuff that happened in The Taker may or may not have taken place._

_Meta-commentarying up to the wazoo. _

* * *

In the prelude to his final exchange with Samuel Rodrigues, Raiden already knows he's not going to enjoy this battle.

"Must you really fight?" Bladewolf vocalizes, his eyes flashing like a traffic light with each word.

Yes, Superdog, they must. Raiden is the hero and Sam is the villain and they needed to have this ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny before Raiden goes to face the final boss. There's no room for compromise this time around. There's no mercy-sparing of the enemy, none of that 'get-stronger-and-come-back-another-day' gig in this fight. Somebody has to die in order for the show to go on.

"_It didn't have to be like this, you know,_" Raiden wants to say, even as he levels a cool, appraising stare at the Brazilian. "_I wouldn't have hunted you down, Sam. You could've lived out the rest of your life in some nice South American village if you didn't get in my way."_

"_And yet here I am—standing in your way,_" Sam would reply, flaunting one of his smirks while his arms spread into his signature pose. _"So what are you going to do about it, Jack?"_

…even the Sam in Raiden's fantasies opposes him.

It's like a scene straight out of a spaghetti western. In the high plains of Colorado badlands, amid wire fencing and needle-and-thread grass, two swordslingers emulate a Mexican standoff as the blistering late afternoon sun beats down on their backs. Their gazes lock, blue clashing with brown. Raiden's talons flex in anticipation while Sam's fingers curl around base of his sheath.

Somewhere in the backdrop 'The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly' begins playing.

"Don't interfere."

"This is between us."

The swordsmen draw their blades in absolute synchrony, the razor-sharp '_shirkk_' of two high-frequency blades compounding into a single sound that echoes with a hollow reverberation.

"And it ends here." Raiden's sensor visor enfolds his face.

The conductor raises his baton.

"Okay." Sam slips on his familiar shit-eating grin, before it's masked by his own faceplate. "Let's_ dance!_"

And they dance.

Blades awhirl, they're performers and the whole world's a stage.

"—just you and me, Jack—"

Sam wouldn't want it any other way. It's obvious that Sam is savoring this battle and wringing out every last drop for all its worth.

For Raiden, it's just the opposite. Although his heart thumps rapidly and adrenaline surges through his veins, none of that is from the thrill of combat.

It's from anxiety.

Raiden's heart is laden with a mounting impatience and restlessness that has been present since his confrontation with Sundowner on top of World Marshal's helipad. Knowing that he's racing against a deadline to stop the assassination attempt on President Hamilton robs him of the opportunity to enjoy the battle, the once in a lifetime swordfight between two master swordsmen.

Right now, Sam is a roadblock and an obstruction. Whatever previous emotions Raiden held regarding the Brazilian in grudging respect or vindictive hatred currently plays second fiddle to stopping Operation Tecumseh from running its course.

Sam is a gate that needed to be passed and Raiden will do everything in his power to break through.

There is no philosophical debate this time around, no Freudian mind games or villainous speeches or psychoanalyzing the nobility of Raiden's knight templar complex. Sam keeps his jabs on a purely physical level and apart from a few jutting slurs, the Brazilian is devoid of commentary—which suits Raiden just fine. True swordsmen let their blades do the talking.

Sam, Raiden decides mid-battle, is a one-trick pony. That battojutsu technique of his which caught Raiden off guard in their first battle now seems pedestrian to the point where the blonde can actually anticipate the exact moment Sam's blade emerges from the sheath. So when the Brazilian sheaths his sword and shifts into his familiar quick-draw stance, Raiden is well-prepared to counter the attack with a well-placed slash to Sam's hands. The blade is sent flying from Sam's grip and he stumbles back.

A pause. Sam pitches a glance behind his shoulder and then looks at his opponent. Even with the visor enshrouding most of Sam's face, Raiden can visualize Sam's flagrant expression beneath the visor.

"Show me a good time, Jack!" he barbs, fanning his arms in a hardened taunt.

Raiden smirks from behind his own visor. Samurai are sitting ducks without their swords.

And then all shit goes downhill from there.

After Sam has successfully proved his mettle by parrying (without a sword, regardless), blocking, avoiding, kicking Raiden across the length of the battlefield, taunting the fuck out of Raiden's last nerves, and throwing Raiden into the dirt about a dozen times—the cyborg is suddenly hit with the memory of that codec convo where Kevin him gave the 411 on Jetstream Sam's fighting style. Right. Rodrigues kenjutsu is basically Brazilian jiu-jitsu under a different name. Brazilian jiu-jitsu. BJJ. Sam is a master of hand-to-hand combat.

… … Raiden will never admit it, but he is secretly damn grateful when Sam retrieves his sword from the ground and the swordfight returns to being a fight with swords.

"Now this is a fight!"

Indeed, it is. And it's taking too much time. It needs to end quickly, here and now.

Raiden unleashes every trick in the bag in hopes of speeding up the end of battle. He goes all out with his break-dancing ninja combos, spin-kicking up a sandstorm. Every point of articulation on his body is used to grasp his HF blade, switching back and forth between his hands, both heels, and even his teeth for maximum flexibility so he can angle his strikes from all directions possible. Functional trophies from previous victories are whipped out and incorporated as tactical maneuvers in battle—Mistral's L'Étranger blending with Raiden's sword combos turn his attacks into fluid, versatile whip-esque strikes that ought to catch any other opponent off guard.

But Sam is no ordinary opponent by any means. People of his ability are few and far in between—that is something Raiden accepted with reluctance a long time ago. The unorthodox hybrid weapon does little in the way of stopping Sam from matching Raiden blow for blow before barreling through the cyborg like a target-tracking bowling ball that leaves scarlet streaks in his wake.

The arid sky is quickly decorated with alternating arcs of crimson and cyan—blazing flames and electric blue… but that's how they always worked, isn't it? Their opposing colors signified their relationship as rivals in battle, opposites in beliefs, serving as foils to one another and a dichotomy in every sense of the word. The two of them are matched evenly strike for strike, stalemated and frictioned.

The fight should have lasted far longer than it actually did. They could have gone on for hours until it became a battle of stamina and endurance rather than one of technique and skill. Until one of them fell out of exhaustion or let their guard down from fatigue and allowed the other to deliver a fatal blow.

It ends too quickly.

(It's one of the components that still linger in Raiden's thoughts several months later, long after Sam is six feet under and the mission is over but Raiden _still_ can't let Sam go. He analyzes their battle over and over again in his head, trying to figure out how he was able to win.)

Raiden doesn't know, doesn't fully understand how exactly he manages to do it—all he remembers is spotting an opening in Sam's defenses that shouldn't have been there, angling his blade, and thrusting it forward into Sam's gut.

"Play time's over."

Raiden withdraws his blade, spinning away from the samurai. The last thing Raiden sees in his peripheral vision are jets of blood spurting out of Sam's body—

[_Retching in pain, Samuel staggers onto one knee. He brings a hand to touch his wound and examines the blood in his palm. It is a lost cause. Raiden's last attack was fatal. _

_Samuel lifts his head and spares a look in my direction. Our gazes connect and I see the life quickly draining out of his eyes._

_In an act I still do not understand, Samuel does something unexpected—he winks._

_That is all the strength his body can offer. _

_Samuel falls, never to get back up._]

The final stanzas of the finale gradually fade away in volume until a lone woodwind holds out the last note on a fermata. The conductor clips the note and quietly lowers his baton. Applause erupts from the audience.

When Sam falls, Raiden feels nothing at all: no rush of victory, no hollowness of an unfulfilled battle. The only thing that resides within him is hard resignation coupled with backseat anxiety of the approaching deadline.

Sam doesn't echo any epic final words with his dying breath, no drawn out 40-second codec call monologues like the other Winds of Destruction had done. There's none of that: Sam just heaves a groan and collapses to the ground—then all is still.

Raiden respects the fuck out of Sam for the way he died.

It doesn't help his emotional state when Raiden discovers Sam is nearly all human, save for one arm and his exoskeleton casing. This isn't a victory at all, Raiden realizes with dead numbness. Here he had been, a military-grade killing machine struggling in battle against an almost entirely biological man. How did he even walk away as the victor? He had won on… luck, Raiden assumes then. Luck. A fluke. The odds were so unevenly stacked against Sam to begin with and yet Raiden still needed luck to grab victory.

"Was this outcome necessary?" vocalizes Bladewolf.

…yeah. Yeah, it was. It has to be this way. Sam needed to die in order for Raiden to continue protecting innocent lives. That reasoning is cathartic enough for Raiden not to completely lose his motivation and sink into a state of self-loathing right there and then. He has a mission to finish.

A codec call cuts through Raiden's thoughts and Sam is shoved into the crawlspace at the back of Raiden's mind.

…

When Armstrong is good and dead, Raiden revisits the clearing off the highway with Bladewolf following suit. Raiden says it's for Bladewolf's sake, and Bladewolf almost believes him. The motorcycle Raiden pilfered from the parking lot of World Marshall remains parked on the road, waiting for the return of its owner who will never come back.

Vultures have come for the corpse already, but the exoskeleton encasing Sam's body provides a good measure of security against scavengers looking for their tainted feast. Raiden is thankful for the small blessings. He's not sure how he would've reacted if he had returned to find Sam all picked away at like a half-eaten meal.

The two survivors dig a hole in the dry, cracked earth and then Raiden carries Sam bridle-style to his grave. Bladewolf is deprived of observations or commentary while he watches the samurai get lowered into the ground. Evidence is inconclusive.

Raiden wants to say something—a eulogy or some meaningful parting words—not for Sam though, but for Bladewolf. Yet nothing comes to mind. He isn't sad or angry or even relieved now that it's all over; he simply feels _nothing_.

Standing above Sam's body in the grave, Raiden takes one last gander at the dead man. Sonofabitch was one of the few corpses in this entire bloodbath mission that Raiden left recognizable and generally intact. It's funny how Sam had mutilated Raiden's body in their first encounter and yet Raiden couldn't muster up the hate to return the favor in their last encounter.

Raiden gives the briefest tracing over of the Brazilian's features, his gaze lingering over the scar running down Sam's closed eye.

It's the last time he'll see the corpse of his rival. It's strange to think of it like in those terms. Sam as a corpse. Not a decommissioned chassis. It was easy to kill other child soldiers, to kill in VR, to kill vending machines, to killed nanomachine-infused monsters, but it's strange for Raiden to know he had killed a man even though population control was Jack the Ripper's first and most primary talent.

Sobering up, Raiden quickly shelves his thoughts. Waxing poetic isn't his forte and philosophical introspection is neither here nor there.

"What will become of Sam's sword?"

Tossing a glance in Bladewolf's direction, Raiden's reply is brief and curt.

"It's your call."

The Murasama was specifically entrusted to Bladewolf by Sam; the recording made that matter crystal clear. The fact Bladewolf handed over the sword to Raiden was of the AI's own voluntary decision. Raiden didn't owe Sam anything.

Bladewolf lowers its head, calculating all plausible options to the dilemma.

Ultimately, Sam is not buried with his Murasama blade. He had passed his sword onto Bladewolf in death, and Bladewolf wanted to keep the precious artifact in memory of his "friend". Beasts are selfish too, especially ones equipped with artificial intelligence based on human thought.

Raiden and Bladewolf pile dirt onto the dead man together with the canine using his head to nudge chunks of dirt into the pit.

When they're done, the freshly piled mound of earth looks nearly indistinguishable from the rest of its surroundings. Sam isn't even given a makeshift tombstone or a rock placed at the head of the grave or anything. Come one rainfall, the earth will be flattened and no one will be able to tell the wiser that Samuel Rodrigues is buried here.

Once they leave the badlands, Raiden doubts he'll be able to find his way back to the exact spot where Sam's body lies. Not when Colorado highways stretched for miles on end in either direction and the vast landscape held nay a notable landmark to identify the battleground where a duel of a century had taken place.

Sam died anonymous and alone. With no apprentice, his sword-style died alongside him—the Rodrigues New Shadow School of swordsmanship ended here, with him, in this grave.

Sam left nothing to continue his legacy, except his sword to a robotic AI canine and a set of cryptic messages encoded in taunts to half a head grafted in a metal suit.

Sam's story is over. In the end, Samuel Rodrigues was just another one of the many whom Raiden struck down on his path towards redemption. Nothing more, nothing less.

Raiden, as the hero, marches onward.

* * *

**A/N:** _I'll get the second part of this sequel up... eventually. Reviews are adored as always._


End file.
